U.S. Attempt to Maintain Peace Toughened by Israeli Conditions

By Rebecca TrounsonLos Angeles TimesJERUSALEM

A week before President Clinton is to meet Israeli and Palestinian
leaders in a high-risk bid to revive the flagging Middle East peace
process, the Israeli Cabinet on Tuesday imposed a nine-page list of
conditions that it said the Palestinians must meet before Israel will hand
over any more West Bank land.

U.S. officials said the Israeli action would make Clinton's task more
difficult. The administration has said the pullback is essential to its
efforts to restart the deadlocked peace talks. "If you focus on the
negative and what the other side isn't doing, there's no end to it," a U.S.
diplomat said. "There's no way to create a partnership under those
circumstances."

Palestinian officials also rejected the Israeli conditions, which add
specifics to pledges made by the Palestinian Authority in a 1997
U.S.-brokered agreement that led to Israel withdrawing its troops from the
West Bank city of Hebron. Ahmed Tibi, an adviser to Palestinian Authority
President Yasser Arafat, accused Israel of stalling the peace process,
unwilling to give up more land to the Palestinians.

"This is an excuse," Tibi said. "The Israeli government is trying again
to avoid implementing the (peace) agreements." Tibi said the Palestinian
Authority was preparing a similar list of Israeli violations.

The Cabinet decision made official what Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials have said for weeks - that
they would, as Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon first suggested, tie
Israel's withdrawal from more West Bank land to Palestinian fulfillment of
obligations spelled out in the Hebron agreement.

In that accord, the Palestinians promised to finish revising their
national charter, limit the size of their police force and work to fight
terrorism. Israel, in turn, said it would release Palestinian prisoners and
carry out the first step of a three-phase withdrawal from the West Bank by
last March. All three phases were to be completed by mid-1998.

On Tuesday, the third day of alert, extra police and soldiers were
deployed nationwide, especially in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, to guard against
possible attacks.